FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS – BERLIN AIR-RAID REMEMBRANCE DAY

If you should be in Berlin today, of Friday November 22nd, do not be alarmed when at 7.30PM many church bells start tolling.

Exactly 70 years ago, on November 22nd 1943 at exactly the same time, at 7.30 PM another dreaded air-raid hit Berlin. This time it left almost the whole of the old City West. The RAF bombers left Spandau, Tiergarten, Schöneberg and Charlottenburg in ruins.

The bombs hit the now famous memorial of Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche) in Breitscheidplatz, Schloss Charlottenburg, the department store KaDeWe, the bigger part of Berlin Zoo and Zoo Station and thousands of houses. More than 2,000 people died that night in German Capital. Tens of thousands (estimated 175,000) were left without a roof over their heads.

After a raid – Berlin, 1943.

It was the most effective RAF raid on Berlin ever.

German capital was paying the debt for Coventry, Norwich, London, Warsaw and only too many other cities raided by Luftwaffe before and after that night.

Like this:

After that night my grandparents decided to get married – my grandmother working as a nurse at Westend hospital at that time, my grandfather being a patient there. They decided they might not have much time and get wed on December 27th, 1943, just after christmas.
They were married 59 years until they died shortly one after another in 2003/2004.
Thanks for the reminder.

I remember that particular air raid very well. I think I have written about it before. My mother went to the opera and my Grandaunt refused to go to the air raid shelter. Anxious moments waiting for Mum to come home.